"Describing it as “the best quality multistandard LTE modem that exists in the market -- after Qualcomm,”"
That's quite some honesty. Otherwise companies usually try to hype their product as the be all and end all of components around. Likewise when he says that they will be one year ahead of most of the competition and not all the competition.
I like honesty and hope that the japanese semi-industry get their act together.

Your comment is interesting. Forgive me for being skeptical, how can you tell that the guy was not hyping, or in a reality-distortion field of his own?
Customers want a solution at a specific time frame. Quite often, the solution does not need to be the best or all encompassing. It is because the solution must be stable. As such, a solution which has gone through field tests and through significant volume shipment is the one which every OEM/ODM love. Given the minute market share or actual shipment of the Renesas solution, a device product manager really has to make a sizable gamble to take on the Renesas Mobile solution. On top, has Renesas Mobile ever showed the world a trustworthy and consistent roadmap since it was created in year 2010? On top, the major stake-holder in the world of mobile cellular market like Qualcomm, MediaTek, ST-E, Broadcom, Marvell, they have consistently released both discrete APs / Modem and integrated AP+Modem in the past. Plus these all have extremely strong WLAN and Bluetooth solutions. In contrast, Renesas Mobile consistently offered "pieces" here and there. Don't be fooled by the bits and pieces. Whoever don't have a complete solution is simply wasting money and time of their investors and their own dear employees!

Interesting comment, considering, at least according to Renesas Mobile webpages, the technology of Renesas Mobile has been deployed in over 2 billion mobile devices.
It is even more interesting that the STE U8500 chipset used e.g. in Samsung Galaxy SIII Mini, the modem (according to this: http://www.linleygroup.com/newsletters/newsletter_detail.php?num=688&year=2010&t
ag=2) seems to be the ex-Nokia one - that I presume is the same one now owned by Renesas Mobile.
Anyhow, it'd be very interesting to learn more about the design wins and the progress of
the operator certifications of the chipset vendors here in eetimes.

Renesas bought Nokia's modem team and yes, Renesas Mobile already has a sizeable presence in the modem/apps processor market. This particular article is focused on LTE ... as that's most likely to be the focus of the next mobiel chip battleground.

Please be aware that ST-E also acquired stuff from Nokia when it off-loaded the modem team. The announcement from Nokia was vague at the time. My assumption is that Renesas Mobile and ST-E divided up the previously Nokia's modem technologies.

This interesting, do you happen to have more details on this?
Anyhow, do you still agree with your own criticism on the stability in the sense that this is something Renesas (including via STE U8500) does not have but STE does?
Narrowing it down to LTE, where are STE LTE chipsets (slim modem or CP i.e. APE+modem) ?
According to this article, Renesas has certification (for LTE/HSPA/EDGE I presume) from both AT&T and Docomo, how about STE - (who is mainly promoting its U8500 EDGE/HSPA platform based on ex-Nokia, nowadays Renesas modem technology) ?

@ DINapp. I believe that the whole Renesas Mobile operation turns out to be a losing proposition, though the original intention was to make it successful. It is headquartered in Japan, managed by a bunch of losers who, over the year, fail to demonstrate persistent success on mobile communication. The cost structure of Renesas Mobile is fundamentally flawed to begin with and no drastic action has ever been taken to right the wrong. Given the world is not stagnant, it would be a pipe-dream for Renesas Mobile to survive.
Unfortunately, I didn't keep the announcement made by ST-E/Nokia at the time. In the last 6 months, I noticed that ST-E managed to design in several smartphones from Samsung, Nokia, and those in China. As such, ST-E is definitely more successful than Renesas Mobile who has been blowing vapourware consistently since day one.

I think what often gets lost in our coverage is this. We write about companies' new products or roadmaps all the time. Then we write about design wins. We rarely report where chips are at any given time in times of a verification process -- done by operators... The interview with Renesas Mobile executives was informative and educational for me.